Published in
Psychological Services to Law Enforcement
U.S. Dept. of Justice Federal Bureau of Investigation
Edited by Reese and Goldstein
Washington, D.C. 1986
Library of Congress Number 85-600538

Over the past decade the journals in the area of law
enforcement have shown a significant awareness of the issue of
police stress. The literature abounds with accounts of the mental
and physical health destroying results that occur from a career in
law enforcement.

A direct stressor initiated stress reaction formulation has been
used explanatorily. Long lists of potential stressors ranging from
public apathy and an ineffective court system, to being witness
daily to man's inhumanity have been complied. (1) The basic theme of
this manner of conceptualizing police stress is that due to the
nature of the job, the officer is bombarded with constant
frustration, negativity, and unappreciativeness that leads to an
experiencing of the stress reaction and consequently the diseases of
adaptation.

The purpose of this paper is to generate a hypothesis that goes
beyond the stressor initiating stress formulations and propose that
law enforcement creates a learned perceptual set that ultimately
cause the officer to alter the social and physiological manner in
which he interacts with his environment. This hypothetical
perceptual set will be developed as a basic social/physiological
format from which the law enforcement officer develops a stress
reaction.

Interviewing recruit applicants and individuals attempting to
re-enter a career in law enforcement can serve as a potential
springboard to explain the law enforcement perceptual set. After
approximately fourteen years of interviewing both recruits and
re-entry law enforcement officers, the present author believes two
definite themes of reasons for job choice appear. Recruits give
responses explaining their choice of a career in law enforcement
along the themes of public service, a meaningful job, and a
potential diversity of duties. Officers, who after several years of
service leave law enforcement and choose after a period of absence
to return, have almost exclusively stated the reason for their
return as "cop work gets in the blood". It appears that the veteran
officer may be describing a sensation of physiological change that
becomes inseparable from the police role.

As a police psychologist with full awareness that the issue of
police stress is a reality, the present author believes the
responses of "cop work getting in the blood" might prove crucial in
an explanation of the police stress reaction.

The majority of the literature on police stress speaks of the ill
effects of this reaction. The physiologically elevated states are
explained as negative events in the officer's life. Yet the clinical
reality appears that the stress reaction and the physiologically
elevated states are the very short-term rewards that either keep
people in law enforcement or once having left, motivate them to seek
a career re-entry. It also appears that officers who’s careers have
been typified by a lack of being exposed to a bombardment of
violence, unappreciativeness, and negativity also experience the
stress reaction.

The profession of law enforcement emphasizes to its new members to
interpret the environment as potentially threatening. Concepts such
as officer safety and street survival are created to demonstrate the
lethalness of the law enforcement officer's daily work place.(2)
These vicarious learning experiences appear to combine with the
officer’s own first hand experiences in threatening situations to
teach an interpretation of the environment as potentially
life-threatening and dangerous. (3) A perceptual set of being
vigilant of events in one's environment leads to a state of being
hypervigilant or over-reactive to potentially threatening
situations. At a bio-behavioral level, it is the role of the
reticular activating system to scan inputs from the perceptual field
and determine which events should be interpreted as threatening and
which as neutral. (4) The average citizen travels the streets of his
community daily oblivious psychologically and neurologically to the
events unfolding before him. Law enforcement officers, on the other
hand, are trained and learn their very survival can depend on their
interpreting most aspects of their environment as potentially
lethal. This perceptual set therefore basically requires teaching
the reticular activating system a new set of values for interpreting
incoming cues and putting valances of potential danger on events the
average citizen would clearly interpret as neutral.

The average citizen has the neurological advantage of stimulus
habituation. The capacity to be non-reactive to stimuli whose
threshold of perceived potential danger is insufficient to warrant
attention. The law enforcement perceptual style considers stimulus
habituation to be potentially lethal carelessness. The environment
is scanned, and even the most innocuous situations need to be
processed. The sensory process of stimulus habituation is unlearned
in favor of the lower threshold of reticular attentiveness. This
elevated attentiveness or hypervigilant perceptual style has a law
enforcement officer in an elevated physiological state merely by
assuming his occupational role.

The reinterpretation of the environment and subsequent reprogramming
of the reticular activating system sets into motion the perceptual
set of hypervigilance and its physiological consequences. As a
message of potential danger is experienced by the officer, mild to
moderate elevations of the sympathetic branch of the autonomic
nervous system will be innervated. This will be interpreted by the
officer as a feeling of energization, rapid thought pattern, and a
general speeding up of the physical and cognitive reactions. A state
that in and of itself is not judged to be unpleasant. A state of
social-physiological reaction that the rookie street cop learns as
inseparable from the police role. This sets the stage for a
career-long perceptual-attitudinal linkage. It is at this point that
“cop work gets in the blood." At a behavioral level, speech is more
rapid, humor and wit are present, and a general feeling of aliveness
can be felt. At a biobehavioral level, the reticular activating
system interprets the environment as less than neutral, the limbic
system is innervated and engages the sympathetic branch of the
autonomic nervous system. Epinephrine related physiological changes
are initiated. These biobehavioral or physiological changes are in
response to merely a perceptual manner in which law enforcement
officers learn to view their environment. There does not need to be
present significant specific stressors to induce these changes,
merely a perceptual set that becomes an everyday manner of
perceiving the world.

The difference between a perceptual theory of hypervigilance and a
specific stressor inducing the stress reaction formulation can be
demonstrated in the everyday behavior of law enforcement officers.
Officers who engage in potentially mundane activities such as
watching traffic pass, do so, not from a neutral physiological
resting state, but rather from a state of hypervigilance, scanning
the environment as potentially threatening and sinister. This
generates physiological changes in situations where a non-law
enforcement officer might engage in an identical behavior as the
officer, but experience entirely different physiological reactions.
Once a hypervigilant perceptual set becomes a daily occurrence, the
officer is altering his physiology daily without being exposed to
significantly threatening stressor situations. This learned
perceptual set and it's concomitant alteration of the reticular
activating system has a social component in the officer's day to day
life.

The well known phenomena of officers giving up non-police
acquaintances and socially interacting to an ever increasing degree
with only other law enforcement types begins leaving the officer
without the benefit of testing other social perceptual sets or
social roles. The seeing the world through the eyes of a police
officer becomes the one style of social interaction that is
practiced daily. The subsequent high-levels of autonomic sympathetic
branch responses causes a feeling of energization, vitality and a
general speeding up of cognitive processes to be directly linked to
the perceptual set generated by the police role.

The law enforcement officer who, without benefit of recruit academy
stress inoculation training, finds the new perceptual set and it's
concomitance physical energy enjoyable and begins investing in
his/her work with an almost recreation seeking attitude. The
hypervigilant perceptual set leads to elevated innervation of the
sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system. This sets into
motion a potential hyper-conditionability for traumatic events
whether they be experienced first hand or by vicarious learning. (5)
This would only increase the effect of any single stressor to place
the individual into an adaptation stress reaction. The perceptual
set creates highly fertile ground for specific stressor exposure to
have major consequences.

The social consequence of a perceptual set of hypervigilance and its
consequence of over-interpreting the environment as potentially
lethal would be a loss of capacity to discriminate which situations
are in themselves genuinely dangerous. The hypervigilant or officer
safety conscious officer would be daily reinforcing in clinical
terms a "psuedo-paranoid" perception of his environment. The
over-scanning of the RAS and the hyper-reactive role of the
autonomic nervous system although a necessary occupational
perceptual set can lead to a pathological interpersonal and
intrapersonal mode of interacting if other social roles are not of
major importance in the officer's life.

The past decades have seen a decrease in the importance of
traditional social support systems such as neighborhood, extended
and nuclear families, religion and other non-occupational systems.
Workers of all types tend to identify more with the place of their
occupation than with the place of their residence. (6) This might
prove to present new challenges to the average non-law enforcement
manager, however, this narrowing of the social support systems could
prove to have lethal physical and social consequences to the law
enforcement officer, the officer who loses the benefit of
interacting with the world through other roles and social perceptual
sets. (7)

The narrowing of the social support systems and the
over-identification with work that is currently affecting all
workers leaves the law enforcement officer seeing the world only as
through the eyes of a law enforcement officer. The perceptual set of
hypervigilance and consequently perceived hyper-vulnerability has
the officer narrowing his/her social circles. And also narrowing
his/her comfort zone of where she/he is able to interact without
feelings of vulnerability and reactiveness. This "pseudo-paranoia"
leads to the adolescent-like importance of peer pressure in the law
enforcement culture. The distrust of any one other than those within
the law enforcement culture. Absolute trust is reserved for only
those within the immediate peer group. This also generates
management difficulties of directing policies to a group of workers
who have a hair trigger of autonomic reactiveness which leads to
second guessing and potentially misinterpreting any management
directive, an almost adolescent-like rebelliousness towards
authority.

If one chooses to follow the natural bio-behavioral consequences of
a hypervigilant perceptual set away from the police role and into
the family situation other predictions can be generated. The
officer, who has not been oriented through stress training or has
not been victimized yet by learning better, can suffer significant
family disruption by the phenomena currently being discussed. The
hypervigilant perceptual role and it's reticular activating system
consequences causes the officer to spend his/her workday in the
sympathetic autonomic nervous system branch. The feeling of energy,
wit, and camaraderie will be correlated with the work place. As the
officer arrives home, the hypervigilant perceptual set is held in
abeyance in the safety of his/her own home. However, the pendulum of
homeostasis swings into a parasympathetic state of tiredness,
numbness, and an almost detached exhaustion when interacting with
the less threatening and more mundane tasks of after work home-life.
The hypervigilance and consequent "street-high" of the work place
leads to the "off-duty depression" of the parasympathetic swing in
an attempt to homeostatically revitalize the body.

As this bio-behavioral switch takes place, one can imagine the
potential effects on the family dynamics. The role of detached
exhaustion, non-involvement with family activities, and the all too
well known "I'll do it later, I'm beat right now" appear as the
consequences of the occupational perceptual set of hypervigilance.
The physiologically based detachment and exhaustion can be
misinterpreted by family members as a lack of interest in family
matters or basic rejection of spouse and family.

As one can imagine it is difficult enough to maintain a family with
the usual pressures a career in law enforcement creates, such as
under-pay, long hours, and shift work. The perceptual set that leads
to indifference and exhaustion and only feeling a sense of energy
and aliveness when the occupational role is brought about can prove
an unmanageable burden to an already strained police marriage.

It has been the author's clinical experience that even if a
communication based marital therapy model is initiated, it can prove
fruitless if the daily pendulous swing of the autonomic nervous
system are not addressed. The biological boomerang of energized
aliveness at work and detached exhaustion at home can only lead the
unaware police family into believing it is competing with the role
of police officer. Unaware families struggle dealing with the
officer only being energized when either at work or telling "war
stories" for vicarious autonomic reactiveness, that energized
feeling that seems to build as the "war stories" flow. It is the
author's contention that this state of hypervigilence and its
physiological consequence is the first domino of a police stress
theory. It's impact on society, the family, and the police
organization are easily discernible

The family learns to also over-identify with the work role. Pride in
being a police family may become a pathological importance on
maintaining the police perceptual set as the primary family
identifier. The consequence is a feeling of increasing importance of
any variable that emanates from the work place. As the officer and
family begin putting more-and more of their eggs in the basket
marked "police role" a drastic consequence potentially takes place.
The realities being that more law enforcement officer's are on the
receiving end of orders than on the giving end, police families
suffer from the consequences of individuals outside the family
having inflated importance in controlling how the family identifies
itself. The over importance of the police role to the family, leaves
the police family unduly feeling hyper-vulnerable to any changes in
variables such as the work assignment, or decrease in the officers
status at work. Variables such as a change from a special assignment
such as Canine or SWAT can send the hyper-vulnerable police family
into crisis if the family support systems are too narrowly linked to
the police role.

Financially, families trapped into the sympathetic/parasympathetic
pendulum can find themselves using pathological buying as a means to
induce sympathetic arousal into the family role. Officers will
"novelty buy" guns, cars, trucks, boats, etc. as a means of
short-term excitement in the desperate attempt to "feel good at home
and get away from the cop work". Yet all that appears to occur is a
vicious cycle of novelty buying and short term good feeling leading
quickly to the new purchase loosing it's novelty impact. Also the
financial affairs of many police families can be devastated by the
financial effects of attempting to buy out of the physiological
depression secondary to hypervigilance.

From a manager's point of view, the hypervigilant officer feels
vulnerable to any change in the work status. The pseudo-paranoia
mentioned above leads to intense anxiety and alienation from anyone
that increases the officer's vulnerability by controlling his major
self-identifier, his/her police role. The hypervigilant officer is
the hyper-vulnerable, and consequently the hyperreactive to any
perceived threat, whether physical in the social environment or
psychological in the work place. Each will be over-interpreted and
cause over-reactiveness. Management will be perceived by the
vulnerable officer through the defense mechanism of projection. Even
the most straightforward management directive may be explained by
the hypervigilant officer as “conspiracies against the troops." This
projection based perception and its interpretive style receives
consensual validation due to the levels of peer pressure in the
police officer's social realm.

At a societal level, hypervigilance will demonstrate itself in
increasing police alienation. A loss of capacity to discriminate
which citizens are genuinely threatening to the officer's safety and
which are not, will cause the officers to lump all non-police types
into the same untrustworthy category. This category, a product of
over generalization, will be labeled with whatever "in vogue" term
is currently being used in the police culture to describe anyone who
is not exactly like "me and my partner officers".

From the therapist’s perspective in attempting to formulate either
an individual or family treatment plan, hypervigilance must be taken
into consideration. The detached exhaustion off-duty stated above
will generate pathological attempts to create autonomic arousal away
from the work place. Promiscuity and abusive drinking can manifest
themselves as ways of attempting to recreate the energized feeling
or "high" the officer knows from his/her workplace and an avoidance
of the depressed exhaustion that occurs upon return home. Even once
a communication pattern has been established, if the family is not
educated to the devastating effects of the hypervigilant perceptual
set, the emotional rollercoater ride can break the already strained
marriage.

It's been the author's experience treating police families to
address the perceptual set and its physiological consequences
head-on. Officers are educated on the need to emotionally
"decontaminate" from the effects of the street adrenaline through
aerobic exercise. Time management is stressed to force the officers
to make a commitment to engage in whatever the desired behavior is
prior to getting into the state of emotional exhaustion that comes
immediately upon arrival home from duty. (8) Most importantly the
officer needs to realize the importance of social roles other than
the social role of police officer.(9) The officer needs to practice
perceptual sets other than those of hypervigilance and scanning the
environment constantly only to interpret it as potentially
threatening or sinister. This testing of other social roles is
basically a form of reality testing to show not all non-police
environments need cause a feeling of vulnerability and consequently
avoidance.

In summary, it is the contention of the present author that a career
in law enforcement produces a perceptual set of hypervigilance. The
perceptual set causes the individual to learn to interpret her/his
environment as potentially lethal. Consequently it requires teaching
the reticular activating system to learn new reactive patterns and
generate limbic arousal to situations that the vast majority of
society would interpret as neutral. This over-reactiveness sets into
motion a work lifestyle that the officer is potentially always being
innervated in mild to moderate sympathetic autonomic arousal
patterns. This is consequently interpreted by the officer as a
generalized feeling of well-being or energy that is directly linked
only to working in the police role. The homeostatically induced
counterpart would be a detached exhaustion when not engaged in some
off-shoot of the police role. This being the over-identification so
apparent in the police culture.

This perceptual set of hypervigilance can be considered the first
domino to be knocked over in a theory of police stress and adding
salience to the direct stressor inducing stress formulations. The
effects of the perceptual set on the family dynamics and management
effects were discussed. Brief guidelines for therapy were also put
forth.